However, as soon as night had fallen quite, the course
of her thoughts came down every evening fatally toward
intoxicating and mortal things. Her wait, her
feverish wait, began, more impatient from moment to
moment. She felt anxious that her cold companions
with black veils should return into the sepulchre
of their convent and that she should be alone in her
room, free at last, in the house fallen asleep, ready
to open her window and listen to the slight noise
of Ramuntcho’s footsteps.
The kiss of lovers, the kiss on the lips, was now
a thing possessed and of which they had not the strength
to deprive themselves. And they prolonged it
a great deal, not wishing, through charming scruples,
to accord more to each other.
Anyway, if the intoxication which they gave to each
other thus was a little too carnal, there was between
them that absolute tenderness, infinite, unique, by
which all things are elevated and purified.
Ramuntcho, that evening, had come to the meeting place
earlier than usual—with more hesitation
also in his walk, for one risks, on these June evenings,
to find girls belated along the paths, or boys behind
the hedges on love expeditions.
And by chance she was already alone, looking outside,
without waiting for him, however.
At once she noticed his agitated demeanor and guessed
that something new had happened. Not daring to
come too near, he made a sign to her to come quickly,
jump over the window-sill, and meet him in the obscure
alley where they talked without fear. Then, as
soon as she was near him, in the nocturnal shade of
the trees, he put his arm around her waist and announced
to her, brusquely, the great piece of news which, since
the morning, troubled his young head and that of Franchita,
his mother.
“Uncle Ignacio has written.”
“True? Uncle Ignacio!”
She knew that that adventurous uncle, that American
uncle, who had disappeared for so many years, had
never thought until now of sending more than a strange
good-day by a passing sailor.
“Yes! And he says that he has property
there, which requires attention, large prairies, herds
of horses; that he has no children, that if I wish
to go and live near him with a gentle Basque girl married
to me here, he would be glad to adopt both of us.—Oh!
I think mother will come also.—So, if you
wish.—We could marry now.—You
know they marry people as young as we, it is allowed.—Now
that I am to be adopted by my uncle and I shall have
a real situation in life, your mother will consent,
I think.—And as for military service, we
shall not care for that, shall we?—”
